SiteGround: Pros and Cons

First, let’s get an idea about what key advantages and disadvantages of hosting with SiteGround.

Pros:

Servers are high on speed and performance.

Transparent services.

SSD storage.

Integration with CloudFlare for better performance and security.

Automatic backups.

Plenty of server locations to choose from.

Excellent support team with great customer service.

Cons:

Storage limit could have better.

Bandwidth limitation can be an issue.

No Windows Server hosting options.

On the expensive side.

Developer-oriented.

SiteGround: Hosting Plans & Features

As we stated earlier, SiteGround offers a whole variety of different web hosting solutions. Here we will give you an overall rundown of these services along with their pricing.

Shared Hosting

Shared Hosting means you are dividing server resources amongst multiple other websites, including your own. This is great for reducing the cost of hosting a site and is recommendable for websites and e-businesses just starting out.

SiteGround Shared Hosting plans are available in three tiers. There is the StartUp plan priced at $3.95/month, the GrowBig plan at $5.95/month, and the GoGeek plan at $11.95/month.

With the StartUp plan, you get support for only one website and 10GB of storage space which should suffice for 10,000 monthly visits. Upgrading to GrowBig, you get support for multiple websites, storage spaces in increased to 20GB, and allowance for up to 25,000 monthly visits.

Their top-tier plan, GoGeek jumps the storage space to 30GB and gives you the space to allocate 100,000 monthly visits.

The company also provides free website migration, but only with their GrowBig and GoGeek solutions.

Cloud Hosting

As the name suggests, here your website is hosted in the clouds in a cluster of cloud servers. Cloud hosting plans are known for its scalability which is great for growing businesses.

Also, it provides an excellent infrastructure where your site can siphon resources from a different server in the cluster if one of them goes don’t. This makes Cloud Hosting extremely reliable as well.

By default, SiteGround offers 3 different Cloud Hosting plans, along with an option which allows you to make your own plan for added flexibility.

The low Tier Entry plan is priced at $80/month which slowly scales up to Business, Business Plus, and the top tier Super Power plan, priced at $120/month, $160/month, and $240/month respectively.

With the Entry plan, you get access to a 2 core processor, 3 GB memory, 40GB SSD storage. The Business plan bumps up the CPU core count to 3 cores, adds 2GB more memory, and boosts SSD storage to 60GB.

The Business Plus plan has a 4 Core CPU, 8GB RAM, and 80GB SSD Storage. And finally, there is the Super Power plan which offers an 8 core processor coupled with 10GB of RAM, and 120 GB SSD space.

It is worth noting that all these plans come with 5TB data transfer limitation, which is decent.

Other notable features of getting a cloud hosting with SiteGround is their ultra-fast Linux platform, 4 different data centers spread throughout the globe, daily backups, and a fully managed infrastructure.

Dedicated Hosting

With dedicated hosting, you are renting an entire premium grade server entirely for your own use. And with SiteGround, these high-end machines are handled by experts to maximum on performance and efficiency.

If you are looking for dedicated hosting, then SiteGround only offers the servers in three locations – USA, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

There are three different plans. There is the starting Entry Server plan which starts at $269/month, then there is the Power Server plan at $349/month, and finally, there is the Super Power Server plan at $729/month.

With the Entry Server plan, you are getting an Intel Xeon E3-1230 – a 4 core 8 thread CPU coupled with a CPU clock speed of 3.20GHz. You are also getting 8MB CPU Cache, 16GB DDR3 RAM and 480GB of SSD Storage.

Going up to the Power Server plan, the CPU is upgraded to the Intel Xeon E3-1270 with a similar 4 core 8 thread architecture, and clock speed of 3.50GHz. CPU Cache is also the same at 8MB. However, RAM is boosted to 32GB DDR3 a the storage space is now a whopping 960GB of SSD.

And finally, there is the Super Power Server where you are getting two Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPUs. So you are getting two 6 core CPUs and two times the 12 CPU threading.

The clocked speed of the processors is set at 2.00GHz. CPU Cache is boosted to 15MB. RAM allocation is now 64GB DDR3. and storage is 2*960GB SSD in RAID1. It is worth noting that bandwidth across all these hosting plans is set at 10TB.

Enterprise Hosting

Next comes SiteGround Enterprise Hosting solution. It’s SiteGround’s custom hosting solution which is “crafted by you” and managed by them.

Pricing of the Enterprise hosting solutions is varied depending on what type of features and services you require.

However, you are promised a custom onboarding system were you present all your requirements and the SiteGround team creates an infrastructure revolving around your needs.

You will also get a personal account manager to help you tackle any new technology challenges you may face while building your business.

Other notable features of the service include support for a wide variety of tools and different platforms including MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis, Solr, Memcached, and so on.

Managed WordPress Hosting

All the above mentioned are compatible with WordPress and can be used to host your WordPress website. However, if you want a hosting server fine-tuned for WordPress then their Managed WordPress hosting solution is the way to go.

Pricing and features provided are similar to what you see with the shared hosting solutions. But here you get access to some useful WordPress related features and functionalities.

This includes fast WordPress auto-installation, free WordPress site transfers using a migration plugin(only with GrowBig and GoGeek plans). Managed Security and Updates so you don’t have to worry about these trivialities.

WooCommerce Hosting

As you might already know, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin which is used to build e-commerce enabled WordPress website.

As such SiteGround’s WooCommerce Hosting solution is an extension of their WordPress hosting option offering similar features and pricing solutions.

Student Web Hosting

SiteGround also offers a special web hosting solution for scholars, educators, and organizations, with their Student Web Hosting. Here you get access to two high performance hosting options, and that too on a budget affordable pricing.

There is the student plan which starts at $1.99/month. Here you get access to all the regular hosting features with no compromise. And then there is the Faculty Partnership program which is offered for free.

This packs in a fully-featured instructor account with LMS integration, free accounts for students for the complete duration of the course, and much more.

SiteGround: Creating a Website

SiteGround comes with the Weebly website builder. In case you don’t know, Weebly is a drag and drop page builder tool which can be used to make attractive web pages. Through simple dragging and dropping, you can quickly add text, images, and videos to any pages.

But as we mentioned already, there is also WordPress support which you can use to create a professional level website any day.

SiteGround: E-Commerce Tools

You will be pleased to find options for PrestaShop, CS-Cart, and Magento with SiteGround. These are excellent tools to get your e-commerce business up and running. You can easily use them by utilizing the auto-installer located in the cPanel.

Alternatively, you can also head on over to the Softaculous section where you will find over 30 available options including ShoWare, OpenCart, Axis, ZenCart, and much more.

SiteGround: Security Features

First and foremost, each SiteGround web hosting plans comes with a free secure socket-layer certification, except the plans in the StartUp Tier.

This is great, and one less thing to worry about. Also, if you subscribe to any of their premium plans, then you will get Wildcard bundled in for free – a premium SSL certification for top-level domains and all its subdomains. You can get it separately as well with a $60/year pricing.

Then there is the SG Site Scanner tool which can help you detect if your site is under any potential threat from attackers.

SpamAssassin along with SpamExperts is bundled in to help prevent spams. There is also an IP addresses blocker to keep you protected from known malicious IPs.

However, the main thing to talk about is SIteGround’s integration with CloudFlare CDN. This can easily boost your site’s performance and apart from making your site more secure and protected.

Besides this, there are two more security tools worth mentioning – Leech Protect and SiteCheck. Leech Protect will prevent users from publicly posting their passwords to any part of the site.

SiteCheck is a malware scanner which will search the site’s code to see if anything suspicious is lurking around.

SiteGround: Uptime

Uptime refers to the amount of time the server is running so that your clients and customers can ‘reach’ your site. If the server is down – facing downtime, then your site will be unreachable and you will lose valuable customers and face reduced conversion rates.

SiteGround promises a monthly uptime of 99.999% and a yearly uptime of 99.996% and there is no disputing these metrics.

You will rarely find any customer commenting negatively about the SiteGround’s uptime. It is simply phenomenal and best in the industry.

SiteGround: Customer Service

SiteGround prides themselves in providing industry-leading customer service. Their motto is to take care of their employees who in turn will take care of their customers – and the philosophy seems to work wonders for them.

The company has set up a multitude of knowledge base articles and tutorials to help users resolve their problems. They have even created wizards to guide users through basic stuff, like setting up their website.

However, if all these don’t resolve your problem, then there is a ticket-based customer care system coupled with live chat and telephone support, all available 24/7.

The customer care representatives are also well trained and quite knowledgeable. They are fully capable of helping resolve many issues, and won’t act as a simple medium/bridge between you and a technical expert.

However, in the end, if you don’t like their service then there is always the 30-day money back guarantee which you can evoke.

SiteGround: All Features in A Table View

If you want to have a quick overview of all that SiteGround has to offer, then here is a quick Table view for your convenience:

A plethora of WordPress hosting solutions, including Managed WordPress hosting, and WooCommerce hosting.

Data Management

Regular backups.

Cost

SiteGround plans start at $3.95/month

Server Locations

USA, Spain, UK, Europe, Italy, LATAM, Australia

In-built Caching

Yes. SuperCache in-built.

Site Transfers

Site migration free with high tier plans

Free Domains

Yes.

SiteGround: How is it For?

As you can see, SiteGround is extremely thoughtful about their customers. They provide an array of tools, security features, guides, and industry-leading customer services to build a base of happy customers.

But before making a judgment and saying that SiteGround is aimed at beginners one should also consider all the developed centric tools bundled in with every plan.

And so, with all things in consideration, it can be said that if you are a developer creating websites for small business owners, then you will find value with SiteGround.